Thursday, 29 September 2011

McCarthy the Mandarin goes private

Nothing quite so clearly illustrates the close links between our Central Statist Mandarinate and the big corporates than the story this morning about McCarthy's seamless segue from Whitehall to a Crapita subsidiary. It could as well have been Tesco, G4S or one of the volume housebuilders, for it's the massive superstores, new prisons and rabbit hutch estates that will all benefit from the planning reforms that McCarthy steered through at the DCLG. Whilst his erstwhile boss Eric Pickles mouthed platitudes about planning going local, about communities and neighbourhoods having the final say on new developments, McCarthy was quietly pushing though a charter for the big corporates that means in effect that Parish Councils do have the final say as long as the word is 'yes'.

McCarthy's new job is to use his contact network within Whitehall to cement the commercial symbiosis between the Mandarinate and the big corporates. Both are intensely committed to maintaining a central command and control State, to retaining power in Whitehall, and to the diversion by Whitehall of billions in tax funds each year to the pockets of the corporates. In return, the corporates offer an attractive sinecure to any compliant Mandarin when they're ready to move on.

In March 2006 Executive Chairman Rod Aldridge OBE resigned in the aftermath of claims that contracts awarded to the Group were influenced by his loan of £1 million to the Labour Party. Aldridge resigned saying that he denied the claims, but to avoid any lingering doubts about it, he was leaving the company. Aldridge is a life-long Labour supporter,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capita_Group

Massive vote fraud, illegal immigration and dodgy legal immigration, Cronyism, tax and spend, and when the taxation limit was reached, borrow and spend like no tomorrow.

Well here is the tomorrow of our discontent made glorious summer of today, by the screeching harpie.

What can be done? Well, a Select Committee could propose a new "best practice" anti-corruption public procurement rule that material contracts could not be let to companies whose boards were graced by former Ministers of the Crown, Permanent Secretaries or Deputy Secretaries. Some would doubtless turn up as consultants instead but it would be a start and, even under the current system, it could easily be done.